Victim`s Kin Raise Money

February 9, 1987|Staff reports

DAVIE -- The family of a 3-year-old boy who nearly drowned in a murky lake behind his home Feb. 1 and died on Friday is raising money to buy diving equipment and training for Davie public safety officers.

``If we could have gotten diving gear here faster, there could have been a better chance,`` said Christine Jenkins, the mother of Valentine Everhart Jenkins III, adding that her family wants ``to make sure this thing never happens again.``

Police Sgt. Scott McInerney said the boy had been riding his electric tricycle in the screened area around the pool about 5 p.m. last Sunday before his father Valentine E. Jenkins II noticed him missing. The tricycle was in the water.

Jenkins dove into the 30-foot-deep manmade lake to search and was joined by neighbors while Christine Jenkins called 911.

A Davie firefighter found the boy on the lake bottom before Cooper City and Broward Sheriff`s Office divers got into the water, McInerney said. A sheriff`s helicopter flew the resuscitated boy to Memorial Hospital in Hollywood, where he died Friday at 11:43 a.m., officials said.